Small projects

The rabbits are already hitting the apple root-stock I planted. I am surprised that they are eating the MM-106 but left the G.214 alone. That might change.

I tooled up with a length of pipe, a stack of copy paper, glue stick and "white glue" to make temporary shelter for the vulnerable root-stock. Putting a fence around the enterprise is on my list of things-to-do. I got my cycle time down to around 15 seconds per copy by the time I was done. I could probably squeeze another five seconds out if I had to make another thousand.

I purchased some steel T posts at a salvage yard. They were charging $3 each which was not a great price but it was a fair price. I only had $60 cash in my wallet so I bought 20.

Ichthys

Approximately 1/6th scale

The church that I attend has a food pantry that supplies supplemental food to people who ran out of pay-check before they ran out of food.

The distribution point is WAY back in the extreme opposite corner of the parking lot from the entry way and it is masked by other buildings.

I committed to making a stencil to be used on the pavement to indicate the directions to the distribution point.

The Ichthys symbol seemed appropriate. My current plan is to make the "fish" thirty-six inches long from nose-to-end-of-tail with the lines 1-1/4" wide and painted with white pavement marking paint. The fish will be supplemented with an arrow indicating actual direction the vehicle should travel.

The Ichthys symbol not only represents a fish (food) but was an early symbol for Christ and evangelization (John 21:11). The 153 fish may have represented the entire, known world since it was believed at the time that there were only 153 species of fish in the world.

"...the requirements" (Cumberland Saga)

Samson and Heddy almost missed the drive into Copperhead Cove. It looked different with the dead brush stacked up around it, almost hiding its existence.

Putting the pickup into reverse, Samson backed the truck and trailer 25 feet and then swung into the drive. It never paid to lock-up the brakes when pulling a trailer. Samson’s truck had been built in 2017 and had most of the bells-and-whistles (no turbo, though) but Samson still drove as if he didn’t have technology for a safety-net.

Pulling into the drive, Samson saw Lliam urgently flagging them down. He clearly did not want them to continue up the drive.

Shutting down the rig, the two adults got out of the truck to see what was going down.

“Mom just had her new cows delivered” Lliam told them. “She is walking them up the drive and they are as skittish as all get-out.”

Heddy gave it some consideration. “How long you think it is gonna take?”

“Hard to tell” Lliam said with a sigh of resignation. “None of them is halter-broke so Mom brought along Bossie who IS halter-broke. She is leading Bossie and the three new cows are following Bossie and Blain is up ahead and shaking a bucket with a little bit of corn in it.”

“You could always walk up the foot-path” Lliam offered.

Samson’s vision of a triumphant return died with a whimper. The gifts and gee-gaws in the trailer would just have to wait.

The new cows didn’t settle down until sunset. They had never been outside before. In their feeble minds, it was as if they had teleported to an alien universe filled with weird noises and smells and food.

Sarah had staked out four picket lines with Bossie’s in the middle. Bossie was the rock, the anchor. Bossie was the key to making it all work.

Heddy got Agnes, their two-year-old, settled into Roger and Alice’s house. It was the house Heddy had grown up in. Alice fussed like an old hen as she pulled linens out of wooden chests and dusted and made beds and filled vases and… Samson twiddled his thumbs. Just like the military; hurry up and wait.

Samson accepted Roger’s invitation to the nightly “planning meeting” that took place on Sig’s patio.

Samson was a firm believer in the axiom that one should gather intelligence before taking action, so he was content to watch the interplay between Sig and Amira.

He remembered Sig from previous visits to Copperhead Cove. In fact, one of the hurdles to proposing to Heddy was to pass inspection from both Heddy’s father (Roger) and by Sig.

Samson was properly nervous, a fact which spoke well of him in Sig’s mind as did the fact that Samson was not intimidated by complicated familial relationships or idiosyncratic religious practices.

Samson came from western Virginia. He played ball with kids whose parents handled snakes, drank muddy river water or walked across burning coals (which Samson had seen with his very own eyes). Summer tent revivals where people stayed awake for days were a yearly feature. Catholic Mass sung in Latin still happened. Yeah, Copperhead Cove just barely made the needle twitch into the "Quaint" region of the dial although he was not fond of outdoor toilets.

It was an article of faith among the matrons of Copperhead Cove that the young women who left CC repelled men who were not Godly. God cast a veil over them and their beauty was apparent only to those men who had been called to enter through the narrow gate.

The fact that Heddy brought him home for “inspection” meant that her hand was his to lose.

He did not fail. When he was unsure of the relationship, he defaulted to addressing the speaker as Aunt or Uncle until he was told “Just call me Sarah” or the equivalent.

Samson recognized “Amira” as a traditional, Muslim name, something he had picked up during his deployments. He could hardly wait to hear THAT story.

Amira, who he had never met or even heard of, was asking Sig where she could plant some chestnut trees.

“I think they should be at the edge of the new pasture where it is just starting to get too steep for pasture” Amira proposed.

Sig rolled his eyes. Samson could tell that Sig found Amira to be vexing. Never the less, Sig had enough respect for her to give her a full hearing.

“I don’t know why you insist on planting nut trees” Sig grumbled. “It will be twenty years before they produce a single nut. Besides, we are leaving lots of MATURE nut trees in the pastures.”

“It might be true that it takes twenty years for walnut trees to start bearing, but these are chestnut trees. They can have nuts in five years if they are cared for” Amira replied.

“And you and everybody else will be gone in five years” Sig shot back. “So what is the point?”

“I hesitate to bring this up” Amira countered “because I know how everybody reacts when they hear “Well, we did it this way in California” or “We never did that in New York City”, but when my mother and I moved in with my aunt back in Bosnia, the chestnuts that grew up in the hills are what fed us through the winter.”

“Some of the chestnut trees in those old orchards were over two-hundred years old.”

“Sarah told me that there is a crisis every ten years: 1987, 2000, 2009 and now. And they keep getting worse” Amira continued.

“So what is the downside? If this is another false-alarm, there will be a ten-year-old chestnut orchard churning out thousands of pounds of nuts the next time there is a crisis. The worst that can happen is that you will fatten the hogs on them.”

“We don’t have the manpower to plant them” Sig said, his objections weakening.

“I didn’t ask for help. I asked you where I could plant them. Walter said he would help” Amira pressed. "It is something he can do, planting seed nuts."

“How far apart do they have to be planted and how many seed nuts do you have” Sig wanted to know.

“My plan is to plant them in a grid with seven paces between each tree in both directions and then thin them out based on nut quality so they are roughly fifteen paces apart” Amira said. “ and I have three-hundred seed nuts.”

“Center your planting down-slope from your house and plant in both directions. You can use the sixty feet closest to the tree-line for your trees” Sig said.

And that was the end of THAT discussion.

It was a demonstration in relentless, but respectful, grinding down of objection-after-objection. Relentless.

Sig looked over at Samson and said “Welcome.”

Samson nodded in acknowledgement of the greeting.

“I had been communicating with Gregor. He told me that you need upgrades in your weapons. I brought some gifts that I want to give you.”

Everybody’s ears perked up at the word “gifts”.

“I brought 4 AR and ample magazines and ammunition” Samson said.

Then, looking over at Sig “And I brought you a bolt action rifle that uses the same ammunition as the AR rifles.”

Samson had indelible memories of Sig’s reaction to the AR platform. “Too many tiny springs and itty-bitty parts. Thin, wire springs rust and break. I prefer Mausers.”

To Samson’s amazement, Sig shook his head in the negative. “I am a shotgun man. Give the bolt action rifle to Blain. He has nothing.”

Samson would learn later that Sig’s eyesight was failing. That, and the fact that Sig could run his shotgun without thinking and didn’t want the complication of another firearm to confuse things.

Amira piped up without being asked “What did you bring for the women?”

“Oh, Heddy brought all kinds of clothing” Samson misunderstanding her question.

“No. What kinds of weapons did you bring for the women?” Amira asked.

Samson shrugged. He hadn’t given it any thought. “I didn’t bring them anything. They can use what the men don’t need any more after they trade-up to the AR rifles.”

“That’s not good enough” Amira said, catching Samson off-guard.

“What do you mean?” Samson asked.

“Cast-offs don’t meet the requirements” Amira said.

Samson’s eyebrows furrowed in consternation. “Don’t meet the requirements?” He was uncertain. He had never heard of “...the requirements”. “What are the requirements?” he asked.

“Every woman in Copperhead Cove needs to have her own, personal weapon” Amira started out, ticking off the requirements on her fingers.

“For the record, every girl who has seen her eleventh birthday is a woman.”

“The weapon must be accurate enough so that she can shoot the man raping her mother from a distance of fifty paces.”

“It must have enough firepower so that it can stop the rapist’s two wing-men when they attack her from that same distance.”

“It must have low recoil. Not all eleven-year-old girls can take a lot of recoil.”

“Ammunition must be cheap so that we can practice” Amira concluded.

Samson pondered the VERY specific nature of the requirements. He had been in the sandbox. He could easily imagine why Amira saw a need for that kind of weapon. If not her...then somebody very close to her had needed that weapon.

Samson did not argue about the impossibility of finding such a weapon, much less finding fifteen or twenty of them. All he did was respond “I will work on it.”

Paging Mike Mulligan! Paging Mike Mulligan! Clean-up in Aisle Three

Old steam-shovel found in bottom of Michigan lake after dam burst. Two minute run-time

 

Hat-tip to MTV. 

 

Bonus video of a steam shovel in action

"But they will cancel Sesame Street!!!"

The Progressives are (predictably) running around with their hair on fire. Conservatives want to cancel funding that subsidizes "public broadcasting". Public funding of leftist, "public" broadcasting is one of the Left's sacred cows.

Their go-to is to scream "But they will cancel Sesame Street!!!" the beloved child-oriented show that airs on PBS.

So what?

Looking at it rationally, there are 5435 Sesame Street episodes "in the can". Have any more letters been invented or are we still sitting at 26 letters, just like when Sesame Street debuted.

Have the phonemes associated with those letters changed in the last 100 years?

Have any more integers been inserted between Zero and Twenty? Does 2 + 2 still yield 4?

Are Red, Yellow and Blue still considered "primary colors" and Orange, Green and Purple still considered "secondary colors" that can be produced by mixing Red+Yellow, Yellow+Blue and Blue+Red respectively?

Has the advice on washing hands changed in the last five decades?

So, being totally rational here, if Sesame Street has not been able to create footage that effectively presented these concepts in the first 5435 attempts, we should pull the plug because we are throwing money away. They are not going to suddenly become effective in attempts 5436-through-6000. If they didn't get it done in the first 5435 swings at the pinata, why should we pay the circus barker for any more swings?

If they HAVE created ample amounts of footage presenting those concepts, then there is no need to continue recreating the wheel and we should pull the plug because we are throwing our money away.

The Good Shepherd

Abel, brother of Cain, is the first reference to a shepherd in the Bible. He is an innocent who is slain by his brother who was motivated by envy. He is one of the first precursor of Christ*.

A ram is substituted by Abram at the last moment (as directed by God's angel) and sacrificed in Isaac's place (Genesis Chapter 22)

David was a shepherd out with the flock when Samuel came to anoint the future king of Israel. At that time, lions, leopards, wolves, bears and human thieves roamed the Holy Lands and considered unattended sheep to be fine table-fare. David had a sling, a few rocks and a six-foot long stick with a sharpened bit of iron or bronze on the end of it to defend the flock. Contrary to Hallmark Card images, shepherds were certifiable bad-azzes you did NOT want to mess with. (1 Samuel Chapter 16)

David wrote the 23 Psalm, one of the most iconic bits of prose in the Bible. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..."

Jesus in John, Chapter 10 says "I am the good shepherd..." and he uses the image of the shepherd laying down his life to protect His sheep while the hired man (who only cares about his daily wage) runs away. His immediate audience were all devout Jews who would instantly thread-all-the-beads listed above.

Morality

I think Marx had it exactly backwards.

Ownership of property is fundamental to morality as we know it in the modern world.

The Japanese are horrified by "waste". It is inculcated within them from a very young age. Their culture evolved on a rock with very, very little arable land and few mineral resources. Within that hot-house environment, there was a very short line of evidence connecting waste or misuse of a resource and a family member's baby starving or freezing to death.

A hired man breaks a tool-handle because he sees that he will get to sit down for thirty minute. A small-holder gently uses the tool because he sees that he will lose a half-day of productivity as his efforts are diverted into fixing the tool. He will lose a half-day during prime planting season or a half-day during harvest.

Some crops are exquisitely sensitive to harvest timing. Soft fruits like ripe grapes split and rot if not harvested at their prime or if the picker does not beat a rain storm. Small grains like barley, wheat and rye are very sensitive to wind-gusts and hail.

Other crops are sensitive to planting time. The ground must be warm and dry so it can be worked and walked upon, but it must still be moist enough that seed that is scattered will germinate and grow quickly enough such that the birds don't eat it all.

In both cases, the farmer is in a fast-tempo dance (tango?) with the weather.

Wanton waste and destruction entertains the evil men because they feel joy in the misfortunes of those who have more than they do.

And these are the same evil men and women who tell us that we will have nothing and we will like it. Misery takes comfort in having company, I guess.

But mark these words: Destruction of ownership removes a foundation to moral behaviors and loss of infrastructure (both cultural and material) will have long-lasting and devastating consequences.

*Jesus has been called "the new Adam" by some theologians. Adam lost it. Jesus yanked off the grating and jumped down into the storm sewer to get it back. But that has nothing to do with the "shepherd" metaphor.

Jury Duty and a random thought

It is my perception that crime is relatively low in Eaton County. I base that on the fact that I received my first notice that I have been selected for potential jury duty.

When I lived in Ingham County (home of Lansing, Michigan) I got selected about once every five years.

According to the internet, only 2% or 3% of criminal charges go to trial. The rest are settled via plea-bargains. It is almost always in both party's best interests to "settle". The presumed perpetrator benefits by the reduction in uncertainty and the possibility of potentially copping a plea to a misdemeanor rather than being convicted of a felony. The court benefits by avoiding expense and the potential of failing-to-convict which would dilute the deterrent to those contemplating committing crimes in the future.

If you follow that line of reasoning, then one naturally segues to a prominent political figure that seems to be lurching from one jury trial to the next.

With that particular political figure all tangled up, there is much less pressure on "the other guy" to campaign in public. And maybe that was the strategic goal of the (clearly) politically motivated legal warfare being waged: To legitimize a repeat of "the other guy" campaigning from his basement.

And then there is the spoiler, RFK. He might be the unicorn-horn that sucks the energy out of that strategy. "The other guy" might still have to campaign and speak extemporaneously because of him. Interesting times.

And in other news...

An advanced degree from Michigan State University qualifies woman for a job picking lemons in Florida!

Let's Go Spartans!!!

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Gary Drostle born in Britain in 1961 and still alive.

Famous for mosaics.

"River of Life" mosaic under construction

Close-up from "River of Life" in Iowa showing level of detail.

 

Hat tip to Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist.